1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a graphic storing and reconstructing method for a graphic user interface (GUI) and an apparatus therefor, and more particularly, to a graphic storing and reconstructing method capable of reducing graphic storage capacity and a loading time for a graphic and an apparatus therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Graphics represent information through visual effects. A representative example using graphics includes a graphic user interface (GUI) function. The GUI function allows a user to exchange information with a corresponding system through a graphic display. Examples of graphics provided by the GUI function include a setup graphic, a navigation graphic, an edit graphic, etc. As functions performed by the corresponding system increase in variety, providable graphics increase in variety. However, when the variety of providable graphics increases, more storage capacity is necessary.
Conventionally, graphics for the GUI function have been compressed and stored in order to reduce storage capacity of graphics. The graphics for the GUI function generally use a 16 color or a 256 color BMP (Bit MaP) format. A BMP file includes a Color LookUp Table (CLUP) of 4 bytes consisting of A (alpha), R (red), G (green), and B (blue), and an index value of 1 byte for connecting the Look-Up table to respective pixels. Data of a graphic are constructed by indexes of the respective pixels. Therefore, even though the index data is only altered a little upon graphic compression, a difference exists between a source graphic and a reconstructed graphic.
For this reason, to compress data of a graphic for the GUI function, a Huffman coding method with a no loss compression technique has been used, instead of a compression technique with a relatively good compression rate and loss, such as a JPEG or fractal. The no loss compression technique has a relatively low compression rate. Furthermore, since the Huffman coding method assigns a code per a symbol according to the generation probability of the symbol, it is difficult to obtain a high compression rate for a graphic. Therefore, the conventional graphic data processing method is limited in view of a reduced storage capacity.
Also, if the Huffman decoding method is used when reconstructing compressed and stored graphic data, a loading time of the graphic is increased.